Blogging
Internet blogs, directories offer billions of news stories — are they reliable?
I was struck again today as I checked in at some of my favorite news sites (mostly online newspaper sites; as a former newspaper copy editor I’m addicted to newspapers) that the Internet is an overwhelming source of news. There are probably literally (just guessing) BILLIONS of words of news on the Internet, spread around MILLIONS of websites, from blogs to free web directory sites to paid news resources.
But is all “news” real news? Are all of these sites trustworthy? How do you know what to read and what to believe?
I can only say, “Good luck on sorting out all those issues.” If something is obviously illogical or downright “wacky,” you can assume you should be skeptical. What about seemingly legitimate websites that consistently “scoop” the major news sites with out-of-the-ordinary news? Are they legit?
That’s where it gets a bit sticky. My general rule of thumb is never to believe the facts of a news story if I cannot confirm it with at least two sources. That was a good rule of thumb during my newspaper copy editing and very-brief-reporting days, so I think it’s a minimum standard I apply to anything I read on the Internet.
What are your standards of truth or “truthiness” (thanks to Stephen Colbert for that fun new term) when you’re reading supposed “news” on the Internet? Leave us a comment, please.
Just now finally getting into the video age, sort of
As a “guy who reads the papers,” I confess it has been difficult for me to make the move from print to online, especially from text-oriented print news to some of the amazing video formats now available.
(I bought my wife one of those “picture frames” that let you load jpeg images that cycle through a slide show. She’s got the hang of it; me, not so much.)
Video and various video technologies for me are sort of stalled somewhere back in the 1980s or 1990s. Heck, I’m just as happy with something like photo graduation announcements for graduates as I am with the idea of student-created online video resumes and portfolios. I understand cards with words and pictures and like to hold something solid in my hand, not just read it or view it from a computer screen. (And I’m no where NEAR smartphones yet!)
What’s the point of all this? Well, last night I started looking around Hulu, a famous online streaming video site everyone in the world knew about but me, I guess. I found some great episodes of “American Experience,” the PBS American history series, and watched the episode I had missed about “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.”
My eyes now have been opened. You can expect me to toss aside our local newspaper rag and spend all my time now on Hulu and YouTube. I have arrived, finally, at the threshold of my own personal video generation.
Okay, I won’t exactly toss aside the print newspapers just yet. But I’m getting there!
FTC turning fairness gaze toward bloggers now
Perhaps you blog, or hang around this blog and others a lot, and you’ve already heard about this: The Federal Trade Commission is targeting bloggers and others who publish and/or market products on the Internet. They recently passed regulations that have left many people confused.
Essentially, their new regulations target people who get free products or services and then give companies, merchants, and those same products glowing, supposedly “impartial” reviews — without disclosing the connection between their freebies (or sometimes payment) and the product/company they are plugging.
I’ve made it clear, if you’ll look at the “Privacy” page in our navigation menu above, that I take paid advertising. I do paid advertising for a variety of “merchant partners” as part of the way I make my online income (meager as it may be). If you have any questions or concerns about such matters when you’re reading anything on this blog, feel free to use the “Contact” form and ask me any questions you have or voice your concerns. I welcome all feedback and I will respond by email as possible and necessary.
Just canceled my Twitter account
For those of you who have been following me on Twitter — nothing personal, but I just canceled/deleted my Twitter account.
I simply could NOT justify the monumental waste of time and idiotic sp*mming that was going on. And once it snowballed to a certain point, there was no other way to get out of it.
I made the foolish mistake several months ago of getting started on trying to see how many followers I could amass, with dreams of Internet marketing millions dancing in my starry eyes. Let that be a lesson to those of you like me who are prone to all those “take a chance” and/or “get rich quick” schemes and scams out there. I wasn’t out any money for the effort, but I sure got into some sp*mmy neighborhoods.
Once my followers had skyrocketed past any reasonable level, most of them being sp*ammers and MLM nuts eager to send me recruiting messages, oh, say, about a billion times an hour — there was not weeding out the bad and keeping the good.
So — now you’ll know why I’m no longer “following” you, and why you no longer see “realwriterguy” on Twitter to kick around anymore. (LOL!)
If I ever decide to go back to Twitter, I’ll be sure to post some sane, useful way you can reach me.
Changing the look, feel of the site once more
Call it an “end of summer” or “beginning of autumn” thing — I decided to change the look and feel of this website once again. Those of you who hang around here once in awhile know I’ve tried new templates/themes here from time to time. I never have found something I thought was so “wow, I really like it” that I’d call it the permanent look for me.
But this current them comes close. I like the “splat” graphics at the upper left and lower right corners of the content area. Don’t know exactly why that appeals to me. But, this is an opinion/news/views website, not a study in abnormal psychology. So put up with my “splat” appeal if you will.
As far as I can tell, all the parts and pieces of the blog are still in place. So I plan to keep this template (which actually is called “Black Splat” by the designer) around for awhile. Enjoy. Or not.
Feel free to leave a comment if this “look and feel” really 1) appeal to you, or, 2) pretty much turn you off. And if you have a clean, simple WordPress blog theme you know of (a free one, of course), tell me about that, too.
One small step from canceling my Twitter account …
I posted about this on another of my blogs today: I have become so fed up with the tons of spammers who’ve latched onto my Twitter account that I’m just one small step away from canceling it.
Do you “tweet” on Twitter? Or are you one of the handful of people remaining on the Internet who’s never gotten started with the mini-blog phenomena?
I started using Twitter probably a year ago? I really don’t keep track of such things that closely, but it was fairly early on in the service’s timeline. For months, I had only a dozen or so “followers,” all of whom I “followed” back. Then I had some friends persuade me there was a way to gain massive amounts of followers who would hang on my every word, who would flock (“Twitter,” “flock” — get it?) to my blogs and affiliate marketing websites as they read my tweets. Other folks pointed me at directories of Twitter users interested in similar topics as I, where I could quickly and easily follow them and most of them would follow me back.
What I didn’t think about was this: Most of those people in directories of users interested in the topics I am interested in really only use that to grab onto you and spam the daylights out of you.
Now I know. And now for every interesting or useful tweet that comes my way, I have to dig my way through BILLIONS of money-making opportunities, multi-level marketing scams, and all the rest.
How about those of you out there who also Twitter? Have you seen a growth in worthless, spammy stuff in your Twitter stream? Yes? No? Am I the only one??
What’s the point of all the comments, commentary, attitudes, anyway?
One of the beauties of owning a blog like this one is that if you choose to do so, you can simply rant. Today appears to be one of my “rant” days, so please bear with me.
I’m asking myself the question posed in the title of this post: What, really, is the point or purpose of all the comments, the running commentary on news, voicing various attitudes, etc., in a blog — or any online venue?
Looking back on the last couple of years, I’ve concluded the effects or effectiveness of running this blog is probably just a little less than proclaiming diet pills that work and expecting to lose tons of weight without eating less or exercising more.
Lame analogy I guess, but I hope you see what I mean. We — by that “we” I mean the entire “blogosphere” and/or Internet opinion community — get into battles over politics or politicians, we rail about news, views, and legislation, and only about one in a million times does it make any real difference in the world we live in.
Perhaps, though, our great history as a nation, heck as human beings living and breathing anywhere, demonstrates that it’s worth the trouble for that one in a million chance that we’ll write, say, or read something in a blog that WILL make a difference.
But, perhaps not. Heck, I dunno.
What do you think? Is it worth the effort to express yourself (myself) online, in various blogs, forums, chat rooms, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and all the rest?